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Where's the Weekend?

When I lived in Ireland both during my school life and working life, I was used to a five day week. Schools were open Monday to Friday and Saturdays and Sundays made up the weekend.

In India, it's different. I'm not working outside the home but my husband is. He only has one weekend a month off, the second Saturday of the month. Otherwise, the weekend is over before it's begun. The school week is a Monday to Saturday affair.

Of course, the Indian calender is full of holidays. India gives equal respect to all religions. We have days off work(at least if you are in a government job) and school for Christmas and Easter. We also have a considerable amount of Hindu holidays. The Hindus worship God in a multiplicity of forms, and there are various holidays in honour of Rama, Krishna, Hanumanji and many more. We also get Muslim holidays, Jain holidays, Sikh holidays and Buddhist holidays. There are national holidays on the 26th January (Republic Day) the 15th of August (Independence Day) and the 2nd October (birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation). So I suppose if we got Saturdays off as well as Sundays, hardly any progress would be made in work of any kind.

But I still long for proper weekends. The old 'Friday feeling' is completely gone. Saturday is not the same. You get over the week's work, spend Sunday recuperating and just back again on Monday. I long for the carefree weekends of my past. Chilling out on Friday evening, relaxing on Saturday and psychologically preparing to return on Sunday. Yes, I miss the western weekend concept. It's a great loss to me, living as I do in India, as much as I love it.

Comments

I would mourn the weekend as well. Are there any plans to introduce it there? After all, the concept of weekend isn't all that old over here either - my grandparents still had school and work on Saturday.

It's similar here in a way, although the school week is Monday to Friday. But Friday is the holy day, which means that shops owned by strict muslims are usually closed. People work on Saturdays and often Sundays. I miss that weekend feeling too...it just seems that every day is the same.

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